like thunder under earth
by Mia-Zeklos
Summary: As Rey's visions of her and Ben on the throne of the Sith continue to plague her, the future changes its course, bit by bit.


**Notes: Title from Hozier's _NFWMB_, because of course it is.**

**The thought of Rey's throne room visions has haunted me ever since I saw the movie and it kept steering me in a 'what if that got her to give in to the Dark Side just a tiny little bit (more than she already did)? Where could that lead her?' and apparently that led _me_ here. This is so blatantly self-indulgent tropes-wise that I can't really pretend otherwise. Hope you guys enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!**

* * *

After the first night, it had become a recurring dream. After the sixth one, Rey had stopped calling it a dream at all.

It's a painfully familiar vision by now. The room she's in is dark and she can barely find her way around, but she can always see _him_ just fine. Ren's presence is just as constant as the vision itself (and it is Ren; no matter how hard she tries, there's no trace of the man she'd thought she had known for a short time), leaning against the spiked back of his – _their_ – throne, dripping with the sort of smug decadence he seems to adopt in the rare moments when he's even relatively relaxed, beckoning her closer with a gesture. Rey comes to him every time, entranced, but it's by her own volition. She can't blame the Force for this, no matter how much she would like.

_The Force..._

It feels different from the way it does when she's awake; heavy and overbearing and sickeningly thick, drowning her under its waves. As she nears the throne, it's less like drowning and more like sinking; like Ren pulling her under the surface with him, dragging her towards the inevitable sea floor. The look in his eyes, glinting in the faint light, claws at her with the same desperate hunger that she'd seen haunting him from the very first day she'd known him, and with every step she's falling through the darkness and right into his touch. The first few times, she'd been startled by the lack of violence – it's not an abduction now, just a return, and each night, the vision steals a few more minutes away for itself, stretching its power over her mind. Rey is leaning over the handle of the throne now, so close that she could touch him, and finally, she does; makes space for herself next to him as Ren welcomes her into his world for good.

This new development is, accidentally, what makes her snap at last.

Once she brings herself to wake fully, she peers through the bond and gathers all the scandalised outrage she can gather. They've both kept to themselves ever since Crait and the fact that she barely gets an acknowledgment from Ben's side this time makes her angrier still. She can easily feel that he's mind-numbingly bored, presumably in a meeting of some kind, and there's not much else competing for his attention. If these visions are his doing, she would have _really_ preferred it if he could do something else with his free time. It's all startlingly vivid (the addictive high of power, the galaxy in their hands, _his_ hands on _her_, the bliss of the open connection once she finally gives into it), every detail embedded into her memory and it follows her hours into the day. Could Leia _see_? The thought alone is mortifying and he should _know better_.

The only response she gets is silence, and so the torment continues, until Rey manages to slip into _his_ dream for once.

It's the same, except for every way that actually counts. The darkness isn't tempting him or dragging him down, it's an open, festering wound that he's digging into in every waking moment lest it manages to heal. He doesn't see it in _her_ when he looks, despite the fact that she's sharing his throne, just as he'd wanted her to. It's as if she's dipping herself in it instead of the overwhelming assault on every part of her that she'd felt; the calm to the storm raging inside him. It's peace like he's never known – a peace for the two of them, if not for him.

_For him, it had never been an option._

Whether the thought belongs to her or to Ben, Rey can't tell, but she slithers away and out of his mind before she can figure it out, now with more questions than she'd gained answers. He's not the one sending her his visions, then; he couldn't possibly be. They see the exact same thing, but it feels so fundamentally different that it's nearly unrecognisable. It has to be something bigger than them, but then again, when is it not?

After what Ben had done, she can't go to him to investigate (the moment she speaks to him, he _wins_, she reminds herself, and this is supposed to be bigger than them too – it's war, after all – but it's _not_). Mentioning any of it to Leia might make the General dig through her mind for the source and she would never be able to look her in the eye again. Finn is off-world and he's out of the question either way. It would be too much. Most things about her happen to be too much for anyone, she'd noticed.

This time, the distant echo of sympathy flickers through the bond; the first contact she had felt in a year.

~.~

The visions, to her dismay, follow her in the night after Pasaana and Chewie's loss. She resents them even more now, as much as she resents her companion in them, but she's helpless to change anything. It's as if this other her takes over entire; a different Rey that she's always been afraid to look at. Suddenly, she's not given a choice – she catches her reflection's eye in the black, clear stone of the Sith throne's dais and it grins back at her, wild and unrestricted and finally set free. Rey hates her. Fears her. Envies her, more and more each night.

"You won't be able to hide from yourself forever."

When she turns, Ren's eyes pierce right through her. They're more loving now (it's a word she's afraid to use when it's just Ren, but it's _there_) and she gravitates further towards him. It's the only thing for this Rey to do – she does have other options, but doesn't see them as worthy of consideration at all. There's only this; only them.

"I'm not hiding." She watches, paralysed by both surprise and a strange kind of resignation (of course it's this that she's chosen, of course it's _him_), as her body settles over his, making space for herself on is seat. His lap is much preferable to the solid stone below, she's found, and Rey trails a hand up his chest, nuzzling the side of his neck and following the caress with a fleeting kiss. Kylo's only response is a murmur of approval as he tilts his head back, chasing for more of her affection like a cat. She pulls away only to see her own eyes staring back from the mirror that his dark ones make. "All of me is here."

"I can see that." His hand splays over her back, both to steady her and to keep her close, lips brushing over her ear as he offers, "And I'm starting to catch up."

As Rey surges up in her bed, startled out of her sleep, it occurs to her that this is _new_. Not the dream itself, perhaps, but the way she's present in it. She had never been an unwilling participant before, but she hadn't been quite so hungry for it all either.

~.~

It's supposed to get better after she tells someone, Rey is sure. That's how it works, isn't it? She shares the deepest fear (the biggest what if) that her mind has to offer and in exchange, she receives a reassurance and a weight off of her shoulders. Finn provides the former, but Rey can't quite give herself the latter as the ever-growing pressure in her head digs its claws in deeper. It doesn't matter what Ben says about her heritage; that's not what it is – it's just her. It's always been her and he's right there, too, ever since the moment she'd managed to awaken her full potential. It's not the two of them in a different world that she's seeing – it's this one and he would hand it to her as soon as she says the word.

It's terrifying and enraging and she's still drowning and finally reaches the bottom the moment she takes the lightsaber out of his loose hold and feels it pierce through him to the hilt; the moment his presence starts to slip away as quickly as his mother's already is.

_No_.

She couldn't possibly let this happen. She couldn't have _made_ it happen. It really must be an entirely different her that takes over, then, Rey thinks as she lets the anger ebb away in favour of mercy and reluctant love and all sorts of things that should feel light and heeling but feel like the dark tendrils inside her tightening their hold a little further around her heart. _Make him whole, keep him safe, keep him **alive**_, the Force sings inside her, fuelled by her rage and pain and desperation. Their bond tugs on all of her senses and this will swallow her whole if she lets it. The world had narrowed down to this one connection and she could stay here forever revelling in her triumph, in how untouchable they can be, but she can't. He needs to know why she'd evaded him; needs to see why he'd been wrong, even as the endless list of reasons she'd wanted to scream in his face starts to slip away little by little.

"I did want to take your hand," she says at last as Ben stares on, astonished. Look what we can do, she wants to add, look at what we could be if you'd just stop. It's not what he wants to hear. She's past caring. If he can't see it now, he might as well be lost to her forever. "Ben's hand."

~.~

The few times she'd talked to anyone about death and what it would entail, even back on Jakku, they'd always implied that darkness would go hand in hand with it. It's a lie, Rey knows now, told by people who don't know better. Death feels like nothing; a gaping, unimaginable pit of emptiness. Darkness feels like _life_, frantic and bright, if she only lets it in for a while. She knows darkness well – she's been looking in its eyes, unflinching, for far too long to mistake it for anything else now. It's a thin line she's walking, one of the Jedi had said as much as he'd helped her, a _balance_ that she's responsible for, and the blinding light that they'd all given her had drained out of her body just as she'd _won_, leaving her too empty for even the Force to abandon her, unable to take anything out of the husk that had remained.

It's not empty enough for _him_, of course. Rey's life overcomes her once again in a rush, maddening in its intensity, and the first thing she sees is Ben's face, with all its hope and love and disbelief as he clutches her near, all the strength that he'd had to give seeping into every bit of her.

It's a sacrifice that he can't afford to make. Rey couldn't have seen it coming – for a brief, golden moment, he's warm and ecstatic and _there_, heart fluttering wildly against her chest as the thread between them glows, white-hot, right before it _snaps_.

"No," Rey says as his eyes slip shut, as he collapses away from her. She can feel his presence filling her soul instead – two that are one; just one and now and there's nowhere near enough life left between them to sustain them both, with how drained and exhausted and broken all over they are. "No, you _don't_."

If she's not strong enough to return the favour – to return him – she can take it from elsewhere, once the grief and fury she'd kept at bay rise to the surface again. She'd done it before, when she'd healed the wound she'd inflicted, less than a day ago, and it's easy to lean back into it now that she needs it so desperately. The Force will take him away, would consume what she'd fought so hard to bring to the surface of his existence and it seems to cower away in the lightest corners of her soul as Rey drags it back up, filthy and dangerous and more determined than she'd ever felt before. There's no presence encouraging her now and she's not rising anymore, in the Jedi's eyes, she's sure; she's sinking, sinking, sinking, leeching away the life of anything nearby so that she can anchor it in him – _them_ – instead.

When Ben lurches up with a gasp, hand tightening around hers, the rest of the world finally falls quiet. Rey's sob, half-relief and half-laughter, echoes in the empty hall around them and his arms fold around her, unsure but steady. He'll understand, he always had before, and it's just this one last feverish need that remains – the assurance that he would never leave her again. It's a bond like life itself. What could death possibly be to them?

"_Be_ with me," she says, forehead pressed against his, tears scorching their way down her cheeks before he kisses them away. There's something calculated about his touch now; something that she recognises, as if from a distant dream. Something Rey might have resented once, but that Rey is _dead_. She'd given her life for the galaxy and his will had brought _her_ back and had nearly left her behind in the process. The notion alone makes it worse and she drinks in his touch as one thumb wipes her tears away, the wide, earnest smile from moments ago twisting with a familiar sort of hunger.

This time, the only voice she wants to hear in her mind from now on is the one to answer, and Rey sees her own grin reflected in the glint in Ben's eyes as he vows them to one another for good.

"_Yes_."


End file.
